A lot of you may have been dying to know what our secret international band we were trying to book at Rock N’ Roll Hardee’s when we announced that we were looking for sponsors to make this happen earlier this summer. Well tonight we are letting the beans out of the bag! The show is happening Monday, September 30th and our big secret band is Shonen Knife from Japan!

Shonen Knife is an alternative rock band formed in Osaka, in 1981. Heavily influenced by 1960s girl groups, pop bands, The Beach Boys, and early punk rock bands, such as the Ramones, the trio crafts stripped-down songs with simple, yet uncoventional lyrics sung both in Japanese and English.

From November 24 to December 11, Shonen Knife toured with Nirvana and Eugenious all over the UK for a total of nine shows and during the tour Naoko taught Cobain how to play “Twist Barbie”, which Nirvana covered live at one of their secret shows.

Of course we have to send out a big thank you to all of our sponsors that answered our call to help in donations to make this free to the public show a reality. Those sponsors are listed out here, support these businesses!

nightshop (in Bloomington, Illinois)
Grab-a-Java, Inc.
Activator Magazine
Hardee’s
Buzz Bomb Brewing Company
Copper Pot Cooking Studio
Dumb Records
The Real 217 Prublems
ColorDerm Permanent MakeUP
Edmiston Consulting
Benny DeWitt Tattoos
The Radon Lounge
Rail Splitter CrossFit
Redbird Electric Tattooing

Shonen Knife will be touring this time around with an opener “The Hooten Hallers” which from our understanding have actually played Springfield at Bar None before, and they are from Missouri.

The start time for this event is going to be right at 6:00 pm (don’t be late)! It is free, but we will gratefully accept donations at the show and even before to make sure we have enough to cover costs of pulling this off (we did fall short of our goal with our sponsors, but are still to the point where it is happening no matter what). Find a facebook event for this one right here.